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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Return of the Juniors, Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama

To them January seems like an eon ago. For adults involved in junior cycling, the time has passed quickly between Cyclocross Nationals and our upcoming Memorial Day trip to Snake Alley. When we last left our duo of Spencer and Mackenzie, they had finished a successful cyclocross campaign with a trip to Madison, WI. Now it's May and it's hot. Packing the trailer, it's out with the propane heater and in with an extra ice chest.

After a short but needed post-cyclocross break, Spencer and Mackenzie got back to riding, this time with a full road schedule in mind: more miles, more hours and a return of intervals. On tap for the summer are road trips to the Snake Alley criterium, back to Madison, WI for Junior Road Nats, and on to Rimouski, Quebec for a junior stage race in Canada. This meant a TON of riding. A TON of racing. Many adults find riding relaxing and rejuvenating, but making 10-12 hours of riding per week not feel like eye-rolling annoying work to a teen with a very important social media life is like a Grand Tour in itself. So, we come up with ways to make the training fun.

For those familiar with the Cincinnati riding scene, there is a llama farm northeast of town along a road frequented by cyclists. Mackenzie, under heavy influence from her giddy female Biowheels teammates, stopped and talked to the llamas. Imagine their excitement when they realized one of the llama's had a lazy eye. Sometimes the joys of cycling are found off the bike.

It became Lazy Eyed Llama ride. While we've ridden past the farm multiple times this spring, we rarely get up close to the llama. Sometimes he's in the distance grazing comfortably on the farm. Sometimes, he's out of sight leaving us to question his whereabouts and what the farmer may have done with him. Regardless, the llama makes the miles and hours pass quicker. Suddenly, the summer road race trip is here and cyclocross season is "sooo last year Dad." Mission completed.

Over the coming days, we welcome you to follow Spencer and Mackenzie on their tour of junior road racing. Since this is their trip, the kids decided the llama must have a place in the upcoming blog entries. To honor the llama's place in their training, welcome to The Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama.

To kick off the 2013 travel season on Memorial Day weekend in the Quad Cities, we are hereby titling these entries "The Tour De Lazy Eyed Llama". Heck, if it makes the kids giggle and feel better kooked up in a car for hours with a sea of corn out the window, then by all means we'll do it. Stay tuned.